Learning Settings

Learning Settings

Second language learning can occur in three settings: (1) a natural setting where second language (L2) is used normally for everyday interactive purposes, just like the L1, there are no failures when learning takes place in a naturalistic setting; (2) second language setting (ESL), environment where English is the main language and students learn formally in the classrooms and informally outside the classrooms; and (3) a foreign language setting (EFL), students learn and use English only in the classrooms. In the EFL setting, there is no support from the environment that permits students to use the L2 purposefully in a natural interactive communication, thus teachers play a very important role in determining the success of learning by providing salient language input.

In the Malaysian context, students come from mixed language backgrounds and are being exposed to the English language in different ways; the urban setting has higher similarity to the ESL setting where students have a lot of support from the environment especially in the use of L2 in interactive communication outside their classrooms. This enables the students to practice and improve their language, especially through conversational interaction. The rural setting on the hand is similar to learning of L2 in a foreign language setting (EFL) which limits students’ exposure to the input provided only by the teachers and the opportunities for natural use of the language such as conversation is constrained only with teachers through classroom and textbook experiences. With different quality of exposure to the target language (TL), urban students normally have richer language input as compared with rural students and these differences affect the rate and route of learning English as a second language. In addition, students from different settings employ different learning strategy (Ibrahim, 2009), for example, the ESL students are immersed in the language setting and employ listening as a receptive skill and speaking as a productive skill while EFL students are not able to utilize these oral/aural skills. As a consequent, teaching an L2 the same way as L1 (e.g., communicative approach) is like submerging the EFL students in learning how to swim: swim or sink, learn or fail. It is obviously agreeable that approaches such as the communicative and phonics approaches are suitable for Malaysian students in the natural and ESL settings but they are not suitable for students in the EFL setting.

Learning an L2 in the EFL setting invites many constraints as compared with the natural or ESL setting. Jiang (2000) suggests two important constraints which are: (1) the poverty of input; and (2) the presence of an established conceptual/semantic system with an L1 lexical system. Language learning in naturalistic environment provides rich contextualized input, but EFL learners often lack sufficient contextualized input, which makes L2 learning difficult because there is no integration among semantic, syntactic, and

CUSTOMIZING ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM FOR EFL LEARNERS

morphological specifications about a grammatical unit (e.g., word) to provide concrete information to the lexical entry of that word. In addition, an established semantic system or prior L1 knowledge may discourage meaning extraction and L2 learners may tend to rely on this system which may cause fossilization or reach a stage where learners unconsciously stop perfecting their L2 or are unable to fix ingrained errors due to the false rules becoming permanent. This constraint prevents many L2 learners from achieving complete L2 language development, because they memorize grammatical items or choose to use L1 translation which may prevent understanding and acquiring meaning as well as other properties of the word.

The issue of what is the positive input for the EFL learners in learning grammar may not be the same as those of ESL learners. Selecting a suitable approach in providing positive input and to increase exposure to a target language in the development of an L2 competence is a challenge for any language teachers. In countries, where decision-making is centralized, it takes a strong commitment from local authorities, to decide what best for their own community. Thus, it is high time for the state government to evaluate whether the approaches adopted by the ministry are the right choice for the students in Terengganu, for example, the communicative and phonics approaches are both adopted from the natural and ESL settings which may only benefit students in the urban areas.